Reflection | Live or survive?

At a time not so long ago that our parents knew, Quebec was born as a nation. He swept the dust-strewn soil of a society that was completely prisoner of Catholic institutions and English-speaking employers. He sought to assert himself in his language and in his own culture.

David Gautier
Quebec

Artists were the first instigators of this change with the manifesto of the Global denial. The song, the literature and the cinema spoke about us. Of our aspirations, of our dreams, of our youth. It was the beginning of a new era.

We have taken control of our economy, our lives, our bodies and our destiny. We sang of our joy of existing, of having survived; small French-speaking minority in America that we have repeatedly tried to assimilate, moderate, control.

We began to live free. It was the Quiet Revolution. Then, the failure of the sovereigntist and referendum movements, the impossible compromise with the federal government pushed us towards the abyss. We no longer know how to define ourselves, how to survive. How to create us.

Our fear of ourselves and our natural apathy have sent us back to our past. As if we had accepted our mediocrity for not having been able to invent ourselves, as if we had finally accomplished Lord Durham’s dream.

Our music has become commercial and tasteless. It has ceased to be revolutionary to present itself to Star Academy of this world with fashionable singers. Our painters have stopped innovating to sell their easy formulas that appeal to galleries in SoHo, New York. Our best filmmakers are deserting us to conquer more fertile ground in Hollywood or Cannes.

We stopped talking about us abroad to praise our exploits, our potential, our accomplishments (exit the era of Expo 67, the Olympic Games). Gone are the days when Montreal was dreaming abroad as a land of modernity and creation. Today, the city is mined with orange cones and each of these cones embodies our wounds, our projects to accomplish before we can resume our broken road which leads us towards our collective destiny.

Our politicians have become boring, mediocre and insignificant. Our political system inherited from the British has ceased to be a brilliant and inspiring democracy. We try to put to sleep any idea of ​​proportional elections, of real reforms.

Many wounds that we inflict on ourselves. We also have old skeletons in our closet resurfacing. The lack of listening that we had towards our Aboriginal minority that we left to die in residential schools and whose language we wanted to erase. We, who almost disappeared, let our clergy deprive innocent children of their families, their languages ​​and their cultures. We have waited too long to try to connect with the people whose territory we share. It took the Oka crisis for us to begin to realize that they exist.

We are asleep in comfort and indifference. Our material possessions, our professional success define us as individuals, but we have ceased to exist as a national entity. We lowered our placards, we stopped demonstrating in the streets. We agreed to gradually go back.

Survival mode

Then COVID-19 swept us away. We cease to exist as an entity, as a Quebec people. And we lock ourselves in our homes. We are in a planetary galley that never seems to want to end. A year, then two, then how many more? We impose a break on artists, cultural events even if our shopping centers are crowded. Even understanding all the merits of sanitary measures, it is difficult to understand why we attack the cultural community, restaurateurs. They become easy scapegoats.

We cease to exist in order to survive. But is it in our natural order? Do those who impose these health measures assess the risk to our psychological health?

Luckily, we still have enough love for ourselves and for our fellow human beings to endure the impossible and to still dream, but of what? Where are we going ? Who will we be tomorrow? What will be our legacy for future generations? What have we done with our environment? The media never gives us good news.

I try to remain optimistic, but I dread nothingness like everyone else. I’m alive, but is Quebec still alive? What is its place in the world, in Canada?

I ask more questions than I have answers. I don’t really have a political opinion, because I’m quite indifferent to what is offered to me. I don’t really have an opinion on COVID-19 and its management. I don’t know what solution will get us out of this pandemic. I don’t know who the people are, and how many there will be, who will still have to sacrifice their lives for this disease.

I would like to say, “Let’s stop being afraid of ourselves for a moment. Let’s stop apologizing for existing and speaking our language, which we no longer even seek to protect. »

Our daily life deserves to be something other than a litany of death and hospitalization statistics. COVID-19 should not prevent us from dreaming, from existing, from innovating. I want people to talk about us, our creations, our artists, our literature, I want us to wake up. I want to be Quebecois and proud of it.